Every year as the new school year begins I’m asked for recommendations for helping students improve their ability to discern good information from bad when conducting online research. One of the first recommendations that I always make is help them understand logical fallacies. To that end, I frequently recommend Your Logical Fallacy Is. It is a website that provides short explanations and examples of twenty-four common logical fallacies. Visitors to the site can click through the gallery to read the examples. Your Logical Fallacy Is also provides free PDF poster files that you can download and print.
The same people that produced Your Logical Fallacy Is also hosts a website called Your Bias Is. Your Bias Is provides an interactive guide to understanding 24 cognitive biases and how those biases affect how we interpret information that we find. Your Bias Is also offers free PDF poster files that you can download and print.
The Guide to Common Fallacies is a series of videos produced by the PBS Ideas channel. Each video covers a different common fallacy. Included in the series are lessons about Strawman, Ad Hominem, Black and White, Authority fallacies.
Why People Fall for Misinformation is a good TED-Ed lesson about critical thinking. The video does a nice job of helping viewers understand the role of simplistic, narratives in spreading misinformation. The video also provides a good explanation of the differences between misinformation and disinformation.
